Recidivism in Australia : findings and future research - Australian ...

60
Recidivism in Australia: findings and future research
Adult prisoner prior imprisonment
There are a number of Australian recidivism studies that use administrative data to measure
recidivism. The results address specifically the prisoners’ recontact with the agency from
which the data were obtained and are likely to underestimate their true level of offending.
One of these studies is the most recent ABS national prisoner census, a snapshot of prisoners
in the legal custody of adult corrective services on the night of 30 June 2005 (ABS 2005c).
The sample constitutes all offenders incarcerated on the census night and the measures
use administrative data obtained from corrective services agencies. The report records the
proportion of prisoners who had been previously imprisoned, where recidivism is defined
as any recorded episode of prior imprisonment. The measure is retrospective and shows
that the current term of imprisonment for more than 60 percent of all adult prisoners in Australia
is not their first. By Indigenous status, this number was quite different, with seventy-seven
percent of Indigenous prisoners and 57 percent of non-Indigenous prisoners having been in
prison before. The two categories of prisoners most likely to be imprisoned are those currently
incarcerated for an offence against justice procedures, or for break and enter offences.
Adult prisoner reappearance, reconviction and reimprisonment
Each year the Steering Committee for the Review of Government Services (SCRGS) releases the
Report on government services (ROGS) which uses the prospective observation of reimprisonment
to measure recidivism of released prisoners. In the 2006 report, recidivism is defined as the
proportion of released prisoners that returns to prison, or to corrective services, within two years
of their release. Return to corrective services includes prison and community corrections orders.
Table 6 summarises reimprisonment and corrective services data from the report and estimates
that, across Australia, approximately 38 percent of prisoners return to prison within two years of
release. This increases to 45 percent when other corrective service sanctions are included in the
measure (SCRGS 2006).
ROGS also provides reimprisonment estimates for every Australia jurisdiction except the
Australian Capital Territory. The jurisdiction with the lowest reported rate of reimprisonment
was Queensland with 31 percent of prisoners returning to prison within two years. The highest
was New South Wales where nearly 44 percent of prisoners return within two years. These
differences should be viewed conservatively as they likely to represent differences in judicial
practice and sentencing policy between the jurisdictions, rather than recidivism propensity.
Given this, these figures can be taken to indicate that, nationwide, between 35 and 40 percent
of prisoners released from custody will be reimprisoned within two years.